Photo Gallery: Working at the Ford Factory

To reduce costs and increase production of his most successful automobile -- the Model T -- Henry Ford borrowed a tactic from the meatpacking industry and implemented the assembly line in his manufacturing plant. It would revolutionize the auto industry as would Ford's groundbreaking Five Dollar Day wage for an eight-hour shift.

Within two years of its incorporation in 1903 the Ford Motor Company was producing 25 cars a day. Prior to the introduction of the assembly line, the record time for building one car stood at 12 hours and 13 minutes.

In 1913 Henry Ford introduced the assembly line to help reduce the cost of the already popular Model T. Instead of working on a variety of tasks to build one car, each worker remained in the same spot and performed one task for his entire shift. Here, men make gas tanks.

Despite the success that the assembly line brought to the company, many skilled workers found the work monotonous and exhausting. Pictured here are workers in the tool and die department in the pressed-steel building at the River Rouge plant.

To reduce turnover and increase business, Henry Ford introduced the $5 Dollar Day in 1914, increasing wages per day by nearly $3. The morning following the announcement, 10,000 men showed up at the factory eager for a job.

Henry Ford required his immigrant workers to attend the company's English Language School.

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Graduates of the English Language School would participate in "The Pageant of the Ford Melting Pot." Workers arrived wearing traditional clothes from their homeland and would exit the paper mache melting pot wearing a suit, a straw hat, and waving an American flag.

By the 1930s, as workers began to organize for better wages and job security, Ford fought back. In this infamous picture, Ford's security "handled" United Auto Workers members after they arrived at work distributing union leaflets on May 26, 1937. The company's brutality was reported in newspapers across the country.

In 1941, factory workers went on strike demanding higher wages, overtime pay, and job security. Here, the midst of WWII, frustrated Ford workers bash Henry Ford's well known Nazi sympathies, first made public after he began publishing articles on America's "Jewish problem" in 1920.

This photo shows workers changing shifts at the Highland Park plant, where Ford's 15 millionth Model T rolled off the assembly line in 1927. By 2013, the Ford Motor Company employed 166,000 factory and office workers in 70 plants around the world.

My American Experience

The United States has seen its share of industrial titans. Which of them do you think had the greatest impact on our country and our world? Henry Ford? Andrew Carnegie? Rockefeller? Or perhaps you think it is someone else? Share your story.